Roy Keane famously said the less time Nyron Nosworthy spent on the ball, the better for all concerned. He was probably right; a much-loved cult figure at the Stadium of Light, Nyron in possession anywhere near our goal was nevertheless cause for apprehension, not excitement.
But Michael Ganley and his colleagues at the Sunderland AFC fans’ museum are confident our Nyron will be on the the ball to everyone’s benefit when he attends a fund-raising event there on July 5.
Monsieur Salut writes: games come thick and fast in League One. We’ve hardly had time to celebrate the emphatic home win against Scunthorpe before the long trip to Gillingham beckons. James Morgan*, our Gills fan, is not from Gillingham and has never lived in Kent. A gloryseeker then? No, he inherited his love of the Gills from his dad and that passes my arbitrary test of true support with flying colours (heaven knows, I was born almost as far from Sunderland as it’s possible to be and still be English). James has pals from uni who follow Sunderland and retains a soft spot for our club – and for a certain player who graced both the Priestfield and the Stadium of Light. I wonder what the Gills equivalent of Roy Keane’s assessment of Nyron – Tony Pulis or Peter Taylor maybe – might have been (Keano said ‘the less time Nyron spends on the ball, the better it is for all concerned’). Oops: forgot to ask him about the Gills sending us down to the third tier in the 1980s …